(urth) Wolfe's Attitude toward his Readers

[António Pedro Marques]

Gwern Branwen wrote:

>> 5553 8783 4223 9700 34
>> 2221 0401 1101 7276 56
>> SEALED FOR THE MONARCH
>
> I would like to be be 'Gene Wolfe' (he is the true monarch of the
> books, after all!), but if that's the solution, the cipher must be
> fairly complex - not a straight substitution. Notice that 'Gene Wolfe'
> has 3 'e's in it, while there's not a single repeated 4 or 2-digit
> group.
>
> Staring, I don't see any interesting regularities. There is one
> repetition in the sum of each group: [18,26,11,16,7,7,5,3,22,21]. mod
> 10 doesn't show anything interesting: [8,6,1,6,7,7,5,3,2,1]. mod 2:
> [0,0,1,0,1,1,1,1,0,1]. If we drop the 2 2-digit groups to get
> 00101110, that's an ASCII '-',  decimal 046, octal 056, and hex 02E.
>
> Each group begins with a different number, covering 0-9 except for 6 -
> which has bad connotations religiously, of course. As for end-digits,
> the 3x2 grid on the left all end in odd numbers - 3 or 1, while the
> 2x2 block on the right ends in the even numbers 0, 4, 6. But there is
> so little to go on that this could just be numerology.

The last columns look like check digits, but there's an infinite way those 
could be computed.... 3 to 5 is 2, 4 to 6 is 2, but who can guess what that 
means.

The first 3 columns all end in 3 above, 1 below. Chopping that out, the frst 
two at least show symmetry - 555/222, 878/040.

I dount we'll get anywhere from the numbers alone. Though if there is 
something there to be found, I'd expect it not to be brutally hard. It needs 
to be hard enough for the passer-bys. What do we have different from them 
that should make it easier to us?

Why is it sealed for the *monarch*? Is the monarch expected to be moving 
around depot rooms? And how come monarch? He's posing as a god, and his god 
personality isn't supposed to visit the room, or is it?